And the Journey Goes On

                            "Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed 

                              between man and the universe." 

                                                                            ―  Anatole France

The glow of my last hours with the children and the encounters following lasts a whole week after my return; my first client tells me my face is radiant. I feel it inside.  And even dealing with jury summons and landline phones not working, light bulbs out, dead kitchen clock battery, root canal appointments, and jet lagged sleep upside-downness does not impact it, the same openness and delight in each moment and each encounter pervading each day even as when I was traveling.

Daily life continues on: watch battery dying; car break-in and window glass repairs; street cleaning parking tickets; license renewals and taxes due; dying alarm clock; insurance companies needing calls; re-credentialing forms to be filled; car dents and more insurance calls; malfunctioning fax, computers on the blitz, taxes to be filed, and stuck keys, etc.  And somewhere along the way the brightness of the glow somewhat falters…. 

I never did have the airport waiting time I had prepared for in downloading Leaving Time  to my kindle, but since my return have read snatches here and there while working out.  As I typed the book's title now, Leaving Time, I reflect that travel, in some way, in its own other world is leaving time, or at least stepping into a different relationship to time.  The stresses of "having wasted time," using time productively, rushing, being late (particularly in countries where time is not so rigid as here), lists to accomplish, et cetera lose their hold.  Time becomes more open-ended, fluid, and a locus for enjoying life. 

One day in Tilden Park, compiling these emails under the redwoods and blossoming trees, two women and a dog, one of the women a photographer,  pass by and we strike up a conversation with the same openness as travelers, and I am reminded again, each day Is a journey …  

The women tell me of a grey fox they'd seen, and the next three times I am there, at some point I look up and see the fox crossing the grass in the distance, disappearing into the trees.



            Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who 
             are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind. 
                                                                                                                                  ― Henri Frederic Amiel

 Another aspect too, in the Leaving Time book --

The missing mother Alice's field of study was the grieving of elephants, and the book is full of passages about the grief of elephants who have suffered loss through death, echoing the loss of child and mother in the book, and I am suddenly struck at how the grieving of elephants are the book-ends (literally) of my trip, which was begun with the book When Elephants Weep that so by chance ended up the one coming from my shelves to be airport reading.  And strange how it was a women's elephant tour (which in the end I never took) which was the impetus that moved me forward into my first journey last year (and interesting that what impacted me most in my two encounters with the elephants that I did create myself while there, was the mutual delight with the baby elephants, even as on this trip it was with the children).  

last year's trip, Thailand

The grieving of elephants.  The tears that are warded off for a month once the clarity of the glow disappears, like the past-full moon disappearing into the haze of the white sky. (When I come home in the evenings, I plow through the organic fair trade mint chocolate bars that  were on sale and thus unfortunately ended up in my cupboard.)  Until in some moment of grace there's the realization the tears, I know not from where, are the only way through the tears, and this too is a journey I need to take.

It's a good time for it, its spring timing providing a time honored path and markers for this journey inward.  And the same opening, offering, being present, that was how I knew to move forward there needs must be my compass here also.


And then there is the blossoming of spring.  And as the first wave of blossoms fall away, other trees bare until now begin to put forth their own blossoms, and flowers burst into color along the sidewalks.

                                                Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

                                                                     ― Matsuo Basho, 17^th century Japanese poet